The Kerala High Court on Friday directed the District and Sessions Judge, Ernakulam, to hand over the memory card, pen drive and related documents containing visuals of the attack in the 2017 actress assault case to the Registrar General of the High Court in a sealed cover. The Registrar General has been directed to keep the materials in safe custody until further orders.

Justice C S Dias passed the interim order while considering a plea filed by the survivor seeking a fresh and comprehensive probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) into the alleged unauthorised access to the memory card containing visuals of the assault.

The court also granted the respondents one month to file their counter-affidavits.

The issue surfaced after a forensic examination detected a change in the memory card's hash value when it was sent for cloning. A hash value functions as a unique digital fingerprint and ordinarily changes only when the contents of an electronic record are altered.

Appearing for the survivor, Advocate Vrinda Grover argued that the inquiry report under challenge failed to comply with the parameters laid down by the High Court in its December 2023 order. She contended that the inquiry authority did not seek assistance from any investigative agency or forensic expert despite a specific direction permitting such assistance. According to her, the findings were reached without a proper forensic or investigative examination.

In December 2023, while considering an earlier plea by the survivor, the High Court directed the Sessions Judge to conduct an inquiry into the unauthorised access to and possible transmission of the visuals stored on the memory card.

The present plea seeks the constitution of an SIT, including at least one cyber or digital forensic expert, to conduct a time-bound, effective and comprehensive investigation into the alleged illegal access, copying and transmission of the video recordings of the crime.

The petitioner has also challenged the inquiry report submitted by the District and Sessions Judge. According to the report, the memory card was accessed on three occasions by personnel attached to the Magistrate Court and the Sessions Court. One court clerk reportedly stated that the mobile phone on which the videos had been viewed was later destroyed, while another claimed that his phone had been stolen during a train journey. The plea questions why these explanations were accepted without supporting evidence.

The Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) found that the hash value of the memory card had changed and that the eight video files depicting the assault were last accessed on December 13, 2018. The plea further relies on findings of the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Chandigarh, which allegedly linked the change in hash value to unauthorised access of the memory card.

The plea had earlier been listed before Justice Jobin Sebastian and Dr Justice Kauser Edappagath, both of whom recused themselves from hearing the matter.

The case relates to the abduction and sexual assault of an actress inside a moving vehicle on the outskirts of Kochi on February 17, 2017. The assailants allegedly recorded the incident and copied the footage onto a memory card, which was later produced before the Judicial Magistrate Court in Aluva by one of the accused, who was subsequently discharged from the case.

Notably, the trial court acquitted actor Dileep last year while convicting six other accused persons.
(With LiveLaw inputs)